The good of the nation

Robert Menzies saw himself as unequivocally Australian and consciously sought to build a cohesive sense of national identity for the country in the post-war years. By David Furse-Roberts.

Famously remembered for his aphorism that he was ‘British to the bootheels’, Menzies proudly declared in public that he was also ‘an Australian through and through’. Whilst Menzies saw himself as British in the sense that he was devoted to cultivating British traditions such as the English Common Law, Parliamentary Democracy, the Constitutional Monarchy and the English language, he saw himself as unequivocally Australian in his post-war resolve to develop the island continent into a resourceful, confident nation with a cohesive society and robust economy. Even as wartime Prime Minister from 1939-1941, Menzies’ loyalty to Australia had been manifest when he attempted to make a forthright case for the nation’s defence interests in South East Asia before a somewhat obstinate British Prime Minister in 1941, with Churchill then only having a limited understanding of the Pacific theatre.  Never forgetting his  origins as a ‘scholarship boy’ from rural Victoria, Menzies saw his personal past, present and future as invariably intertwined with that of Australia. As such, he maintained an abiding interest in reinforcing Australia’s national identity as the country modernised economically and socially after WWII.

Conscious that Australia was still a relatively young nation, Menzies saw post-war Australia as ‘still on the threshold of our national life’. For Menzies, one of the great impulses behind the historical formation of Australia’s national character was the ‘pioneering spirit’.  From the Governor of NSW, Lachlan Macquarie, to the convict-turned-architect, Francis Greenway, many of Australia’s early convicts, settlers, explorers and gold prospectors of the colonial age were doughty pioneers of initiative, enterprise and resourcefulness. Overcoming all manner of geographical and social obstacles, they had toiled under foreign skies to cultivate the land, build roads, schools and hospitals, establish businesses and institute new parliaments and courts. Drawing on inherited British customs and traditions to forge a free and progressive civilisation in the antipodes, Australia’s pioneers epitomised the values that Menzies so admired. The Australian pioneering spirit, however, was not simply a historical phenomenon to be celebrated in the bush ballads and folklore of old, but an enduring ethos that was sorely needed in the present to drive the nation forward to future greatness. Menzies warned that if Australians do not live as ‘pioneers’ today, the future vitality and prosperity of the nation would be at stake.

Repudiating the insular, nativist conception of Australian national identity that had held sway in the early years of Federation, Menzies welcomed post-war immigration as an opportunity for Australia to cement its own sense of itself.  Appreciating that Australia had always been a nation of immigrants; Menzies regarded the new wave of European arrivals in the 1950s and 60s as the great heirs to the colonial free settlers from Britain and Ireland who had contributed so much to the development of the country in the past century. Like the previous generations of free settlers, the post-war immigrants were seen by Menzies as present-day exemplars of the pioneering spirit that had built Australia.  In their boldness of spirit to uproot from the ‘old world’ of Europe to start afresh in a new homeland, they exhibited the thirst for discovery, adventure, enterprise and achievement which would only give new breath to Australia’s pioneering spirit. With post-war immigrants opening new businesses in Australia’s cities and contributing to national public works programmes such as the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme, they would tread in the footsteps of those earlier arrivals that had mined the earth and laid the first roads and railways. Thus through a sustained programme of post-war immigration, Australia’s national identity would be fortified and not eroded.

Despite remaining a federalist, Menzies was anxious to overcome the handicap of state parochialism to emphasise that citizens were Australians first before they were Tasmanians or Queenslanders

While Menzies was an impenitent believer in the British tenets of Australia’s civilisation and culture, he did not hold these to be race-specific. Despite continuing restrictions on non-European immigration to Australia, an individual no longer needed to be of Anglo-Saxon extraction to be deemed free to participate in national life as a full Australian citizen. Indeed, Menzies went so far as to envisage a future time when the nation would be led by a prime minister with a non-Anglo-Saxon name. Essentially, his faith in the genius of British traditions, such as the English language and the English Common Law, to be received into the diverse ethnic groups of the Commonwealth gave him assurance that an increasingly multi-racial Australia could pose no challenge to their perpetuity. Thus in contrast to earlier Australian nationalists such as James Edmond of The Bulletin and Prime Minister Billy Hughes, Menzies did not see Australia’s cultural identity as necessarily contingent on the preservation of a homogenous, Anglo-Saxon population. 

In common, however, with older forms of Australian patriotism, Menzies had an evident affection for the Australian bush as the wellspring of national virtues and ideals. In the tradition of Banjo Paterson and the bush poets, he spoke warmly of Australian country life as fostering the ideals of a ‘sturdy individualism’ and a ‘rugged patriotism’. In the face of adversity, the outback explorer, the small-town entrepreneur, the miner and the farmer on the land were esteemed for embodying the pioneering spirit of resourcefulness and dogged resilience. The contribution of rural folklore to Australia’s national identity was not lost on Menzies when he lauded Waltzing Matilda as ‘superbly Australian’. As Prime Minister, Menzies understood the importance of the ‘bush’ to Australian life and sought to advance the interests of the rural community by working in close concert with the Country Party.

As well as cherishing the old pioneering virtues, Menzies’ sense of Australian national identity also appealed to newer expressions of nationhood, particularly the notion of Australia as a whole.  Although this had been championed earlier by Sir Henry Parkes and the other pioneers of Australian Federation, it was reinforced by Menzies and given concrete form in the consolidation of Canberra as the national capital. Despite remaining a federalist, Menzies was anxious to overcome the handicap of state parochialism to emphasise that citizens were Australians first before they were Tasmanians or Queenslanders. To provide all Australians with a tangible focal point of national identity and a national capital in which they could all take immense pride, Menzies committed his government to developing Canberra. In 1957, the government established the National Capital Development Commission as an independent statutory authority charged with overseeing the planning and development of the city. During Menzies time in office, the great bulk of the federal public service moved from the state capitals to Canberra and Lake Burley Griffin was inaugurated in October 1964. The new city emerging around the glimmering shores of Lake Burley Griffin represented not only the crown of the Australian Commonwealth, but a uniquely Australian creation with its founding suburbs, streets, parks and buildings bearing the names of Australian leaders and pioneers.

Selected Menzies quotes on national identity:

“A nation is like a river. It will rise no higher than its source.”

Robert Menzies, The Individual in the New Order, City Hall, Brisbane, 21 January 1943

“First, we are Australians; not remote and scattered colonists but a closely-knit nation, building our traditions for the future upon the noble traditions of the past; adding to them, as we trust, the products of our own character, conflicts and achievements”

Robert Menzies, Broadcast on the Occasion of Australia’s Jubilee Celebrations, 9 May 1951

“I am a dyed-in-the-wool Australian, and I believe in Australia. I think that we are a good country and a good people.”

Robert Menzies, “Australia – Man to Man”, Broadcast, 26 August 1953

“No nation does well to forget its past; but no nation can live on its past. It is on what we do now and in the future that somebody else’s history will someday depend”

Robert Menzies, Australia Day, Broadcast, 26 January 1955

“We’ll have to develop more and more a sense of community. We’re not West Australians first you know, or Victorians first, we’re Australian.

Robert Menzies, Liberal Party Rally, Cottesloe (WA), 8 March 1958

“We are a friendly people. We are not stuffy. We are not consumed by snobberies of class, or some of this nonsense that has beset some of the older countries of the world. You are in an essentially democratic country where every man has a chance to stand on his own feet, and every woman, and to be taken at his or her own true value by other people. Nothing could be better than that: to be free, to feel that there is no shadow over you, to feel that there is none of the paraphernalia of dictatorship in this country, that we are, in the truest sense, a friendly community, a brotherhood, and a sisterhood of people”

Robert Menzies, Naturalisation Ceremony, Perth, 24 July 1961

David Furse-Roberts is the editor of Menzies in his own words: A collection of quotes. You can purchase the book here